Thursday, March 31, 2011

Ethan has become very inquisitive. We get constant questions about how the world works. For example, “Why Daddy go work?”, “Why Mommy Daddy married?”, or “Where sun come from?” He’s not shy about follow-up questions either. When he asked, “Where thunder come from?”, we talked about lightning and how it makes a big boom. “Where boom come from?” That was a tough one, trying to explain in even the simplest terms about air pressure to someone who only partially understands what air is.

Today for the first time, I was at a loss for any semblance of an answer that would capture man’s knowledge of a subject into a buo-sized nugget. When we were walking down by the river, Ethan asked, “Why water moving?” That wasn’t too hard: high ground, low ground; water goes down, like in the sink. The follow-up was the trouble: “Why ground high?” I just couldn’t see cracking the lid on glacial carving, so I bypassed a few thousand years of history and went straight to, “That’s how God made the land.” I may not have been satisfied, but Ethan was. Of course, overall I am thoroughly satisfied with how many wonderful opportunities we get to tell Ethan about the wonderful world God has given us.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Thursday, March 3, 2011

What started for me as a routine household chore—using a pair of long-tip needle-nose pliers to extract a penguin from the kitchen sink garbage disposal—became the beginning for Ethan of an enduring childhood duty as the husband’s apprentice: holding the flashlight.

Ethan had no idea what he was stepping into; he just wanted to see what I was shining the flashlight on. But once he had pushed over a dining room chair and was standing right next to me, why not take advantage of the available steady hand? The result: Ethan had the satisfaction of knowing he played a part in keeping his Playmobil Penguin Zoo a complete, mangle-free unit.